Get out your blue eyeshadow and hair crimper, because I'm throwing it back to the '80s today! I recently read the classic (oh Lord, things from the '80s are now "classic" and I feel old) manual for creatives, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. A bit woo in places for me, but I loved the idea of morning pages to kickstart creativity for the day. Basically, you wake up and you write three pages longhand about anything you want - it could be what you're going to have for breakfast, why that paragraph you wrote yesterday made you want to bust out the champagne because it was so good, the pain of stepping on a Lego, the errands you have to run, the sunrise, "why is writing hard?" over and over again. You get the picture. Anything that's rolling around your head, get it out of there so you can invite creativity in.
I've been doing this for a bit and I've found it's a great way to sweep out the thoughts that preoccupy me. Putting them on paper makes them concrete and real rather than nebulous and continuously looping around in my head. (I'm a ruminator.) I can pin them down, analyze them, and then move on to more important things. It's like therapy for the cost of a journal!
So here's a challenge: commit to doing this for 30 days with me. I would love to hear how it works out for you and if you've found it's helped you write better or generally helped free up space to focus on things that matter to you. Let me know here in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter how it goes!